Dynamic Content Player Interface Adaptation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content providers have limited control over the graphical user interface of web-based multimedia players, including features like closed captioning, and content hosting sites face challenges in maintaining a user-friendly interface without clutter, as they cannot specify the graphical assets or features displayed with the content.
Innovation Solution
Content providers can populate a module descriptor with information about supported features and graphical assets, including a download location, which is retrieved and integrated into the player's interface by the content player, allowing users to select and enable features like closed captioning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If content hosting sites provide a multimedia player with multiple features and graphical user interface elements, then more functionality is available to users, but the interface becomes cluttered and distracts users from enjoying the content
Solution Approach 1:
The multimedia player dynamically adjusts its graphical user interface by loading or hiding specific controls based on the content being played. The system determines which features are relevant to the current content and displays only those controls, making the interface adaptive rather than static. This resolves the contradiction by providing full functionality when needed while maintaining a clean interface when features are not applicable.
Solution Approach 2:
Different parts of the user interface are selectively enabled or disabled based on the content characteristics. Instead of uniformly showing all controls, the system applies different visibility states to different controls based on their relevance to the current content. This allows the interface to provide localized functionality where needed while maintaining simplicity elsewhere.
2Adaptability or versatility
If content providers have control over the graphical user interface and features displayed with their content, then customization and user control are improved, but the system complexity and integration requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses a universal metadata structure that can describe multiple different features and controls in a standardized way. This module descriptor format can represent various content types and their associated controls through a common interface, allowing the same player infrastructure to handle diverse customization requirements without increasing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary metadata layer (module descriptor) that sits between the content provider's requirements and the player's implementation. This intermediary structure translates content-specific feature requirements into a standardized format that the player can uniformly process, reducing the integration complexity while preserving customization capabilities.
3Ease of operation
If the multimedia player displays all available features and controls, then users have access to all functionality, but the user experience is degraded due to distraction from the content
Solution Approach 1:
The player interface dynamically adapts its control visibility based on content analysis. Controls are shown or hidden in real-time depending on what features are relevant to the current content being played. This dynamic behavior ensures users have access to necessary functionality while minimizing distracting elements that are not applicable to the current content.
Solution Approach 2:
The system extracts and displays only the subset of controls that are relevant to the current content, removing unnecessary controls from the interface. By separating relevant controls from irrelevant ones and displaying only the necessary subset, the system maintains feature accessibility while eliminating user distraction.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for a content player to determine and retrieve a graphical asset associated with a player feature supported by the content. The content player downloads the graphical assets, integrates the graphical assets in the player's graphical user interface, and displays the graphical assets as part of the player's user interface. The user can now select one of the graphical assets to enable the player feature associated with the graphical asset.